Drought task force's quandary: 'We can't make it rain'

Thursday

Jul 26, 2012 at 12:01 AMJul 26, 2012 at 7:11 AM

SPRINGFIELD -- Representatives of state and federal agencies, scientific groups and others with a stake in the ongoing drought meet every couple of weeks in the Mississippi River conference room of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s offices on North Grand Avenue.

CHRIS WETTERICH

SPRINGFIELD -- Representatives of state and federal agencies, scientific groups and others with a stake in the ongoing drought meet every couple of weeks in the Mississippi River conference room of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s offices on North Grand Avenue.

An agenda is printed up. Officials from outside the city call in on a speakerphone. Each department submits a report to the state’s Drought Response Task Force, and the reports are posted online.

But there is very little other action the state can take.

“We can’t change the flow in the rivers,” said Arlan Juhl, director of the office of water resources in the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and a co-chair of the task force. “We can’t make it rain.”

As a result, the task force’s main purposes are to arrange for financial assistance when possible and gather and distribute drought information -- such as water levels and crop conditions. The group has a one-stop web site for drought information.

“We’re really trying to keep in touch with one another,” said Rick Cobb, deputy division manager for the IEPA’s division of public water supplies. “The conditions of the drought, we cannot obviously change.”

One area where the state could be helpful to the city of Springfield is if the city needs an emergency extra water supply. After nearly 50 years of discussion, city fathers continue to debate the best way to supplement Lake Springfield in times of drought -- whether to build a second lake or instead to tap into gravel pits east of the city that contain millions of gallons of water.

It will take many more years, if ever for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the state EPA to issue a permit to construct a new lake. But if Springfield winds up needing more water this year, agencies within the task force could OK pumping from the gravel pits rather quickly.

“It’s possible,” Cobb said. “The pit is there with the water, so it would just be an intake, a pump, a transmission line, that sort of thing.

“We can actually issue emergency permits for public water supplies if they’re needing new storage, needing to drill new wells, needing to put in new intakes and that sort of thing,” Cobb added. “It’s been done in the past where water had to be pumped from one area to the next.”

The task force’s work has mostly focused on agriculture so far, Cobb said. This drought has been declared an agricultural one, but not yet one for water supplies. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported this week that 66 percent of the corn crop, 49 percent of the soybean crop, 91 percent of pasture, 91 percent of topsoil and 97 percent of subsoil was rated poor to very poor.

A water supply drought depends on the duration and severity of the drought.

“Our engineers are contacting those supplies every week,” Cobb said. “We’re seeing some levels out there that were this low at the end of the 1988 drought.”

The Department of Natural Resources’ main role on the drought task force is to monitor rivers and state parks, said Juhl.

“In the broader spectrum, we’re looking at what happens to the aquatic habitat in the rivers as these rivers begin to reach low flow and some of these streams begin drying up,” Juhl said. “We’re also trying to determine what happens when we have restrictive use requirements on rivers, where industrial users are required to limit their withdrawal of water at low flow conditions.”

Chris Wetterich can be reached at (217) 788-1523.

On the Web

Read the latest on the state’s response to the drought and other drought information.

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